47 Facts About Emperor Alexander I

Emperor Alexander I was the eldest son of Emperor Paul I and Sophie Dorothea of Wurttemberg.

Son of Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later Paul I, Alexander succeeded to the throne after his father was murdered.

Emperor Alexander I ruled Russia during the chaotic period of the Napoleonic Wars.

Emperor Alexander I appointed Mikhail Speransky, the son of a village priest, as one of his closest advisors.

Emperor Alexander I fought a small-scale naval war against Britain between 1807 and 1812 as well as a short war against Sweden after Sweden's refusal to join the Continental System.

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Emperor Alexander I formed the Holy Alliance to suppress revolutionary movements in Europe which he saw as immoral threats to legitimate Christian monarchs.

Emperor Alexander I helped Austria's Klemens von Metternich in suppressing all national and liberal movements.

Emperor Alexander I purged schools of foreign teachers, as education became more religiously driven as well as politically conservative.

Emperor Alexander I died of typhus in December 1825 while on a trip to southern Russia.

Emperor Alexander I left no legitimate children, as his two daughters died in childhood.

Emperor Alexander I was named after Saint Petersburg patron saint - Alexander Nevsky.

Emperor Alexander I's grandmother was the one who presided over his marriage to the young princess.

Emperor Alexander I began to sympathize more with his father, as he saw visiting his father's fiefdom at Gatchina as a relief from the ostentatious court of the empress.

Emperor Alexander I was prone to fits of temper, and he often went into fits of rage when events did not go his way.

Emperor Alexander I wrote that Russia had become a "plaything for the insane" and that "absolute power disrupts everything".

Emperor Alexander I accused his wife of conspiring to become another Catherine and seize power from him as his mother did from his father.

Emperor Alexander I suspected Alexander of conspiring against him, despite his son's earlier refusal to seize power from Paul.

Alexander I succeeded to the throne on 23 March 1801 and was crowned in the Kremlin on 15 September of that year.

When Emperor Alexander I's reign began, there were three universities in Russia, at Moscow, Vilna, and Dorpat.

Later on, La Harpe and his friend Henri Monod lobbied Emperor Alexander I, who persuaded the other Allied powers opposing Napoleon to recognise Vaudois and Argovian independence, in spite of Bern's attempts to reclaim them as subject lands.

Emperor Alexander I's disillusionment was completed by the execution of the duc d'Enghien on trumped up charges.

Emperor Alexander I was especially alarmed and decided he had to somehow curb Napoleon's power.

Emperor Alexander I argued that the outcome of the war was not only to be the liberation of France, but the universal triumph of "the sacred rights of humanity".

Emperor Alexander I had no sooner entered Vienna in triumph than he opened negotiations with Alexander; he resumed them after the Battle of Austerlitz.

Emperor Alexander I realised that in Napoleon sentiment never got the better of reason, that as a matter of fact he had never intended his proposed "grand enterprise" seriously, and had only used it to preoccupy the mind of the Tsar while he consolidated his own power in Central Europe.

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Emperor Alexander I used it initially to remove "the geographical enemy" from the gates of Saint Petersburg by wresting Finland from Sweden, and he hoped further to make the Danube the southern frontier of Russia.

Emperor Alexander I complained that the Treaty of Vienna, which added largely to the Duchy of Warsaw, had "ill requited him for his loyalty", and he was only mollified for the time being by Napoleon's public declaration that he had no intention of restoring Poland, and by a convention, signed on 4 January 1810, but not ratified, abolishing the Polish name and orders of chivalry.

Emperor Alexander I kept Russia as neutral as possible in the ongoing French war with Britain.

Emperor Alexander I did allow trade to continue secretly with Britain and did not enforce the blockade required by the Continental System.

Emperor Alexander I had promised assistance to Russia in its war against the Ottoman Empire, but as the campaign went on, France offered no support at all.

Emperor Alexander I's diplomats managed to extract promises from Prussia and Austria that should Napoleon invade Russia, the former would help Napoleon as little as possible and that the latter would give no aid at all.

Primarily on the advice of his sister and Count Aleksey Arakcheyev, Emperor Alexander I did not take operational control as he had done during the 1805 campaign, instead delegating control to his generals, Michael Barclay de Tolly, Prince Pyotr Bagration and Mikhail Kutuzov.

In 1801, Emperor Alexander I appointed Pavel Tsitsianov, a die-hard Russian imperialist of Georgian origin, as Russian commander in chief of the Caucasus.

Emperor Alexander I complied and appointed Prince Mikhail Kutuzov to take over command of the army.

Emperor Alexander I, being the supreme commander of the Coalition forces in the theatre and the paramount monarch among the three main Coalition monarchs, ordered all Coalition forces in Germany to cross the Rhine and invade France.

Emperor Alexander I sent an envoy to meet with the French to hasten the surrender.

Emperor Alexander I offered generous terms to the French and although having intended to avenge Moscow, he declared himself to be bringing peace to France rather than its destruction.

Emperor Alexander I tried to calm the unrest of his conscience by correspondence with the leaders of the evangelical revival on the continent, and sought for omens and supernatural guidance in texts and passages of scripture.

For Madame de Krudener was not the only influence behind the throne; and, though Emperor Alexander I had declared war against the Revolution, La Harpe was once more at his elbow, and the catchwords of the gospel of humanity were still on his lips.

At the Congress of Laibach, which had been adjourned in the spring of 1821, Emperor Alexander I received news of the Greek revolt against the Ottoman Empire.

From this time until his death, Emperor Alexander I's mind was conflicted between his dreams of a stable confederation of Europe and his traditional mission as leader of the Orthodox crusade against the Ottomans.

Siding against the Greek revolt for the sake of stability in the region, Emperor Alexander I expelled its leader Emperor Alexander I Ypsilantis from the Russian Imperial Cavalry, and directed his foreign minister, Ioannis Kapodistrias, himself a Greek, to disavow any Russian sympathy with Ypsilantis; and in 1822, he issued orders to turn back a deputation from the Greek Morea province to the Congress of Verona on the road.

Emperor Alexander I made some effort to reconcile the principles at conflict in his mind.

Emperor Alexander I later told his friend Frederick William III that the marriage, a political match devised by his grandmother, Catherine the Great, regrettably proved to be a misfortune for him and his spouse.

In 1809, Alexander I was widely and famously rumoured to have had an affair with the Finnish noblewoman Ulla Mollersvard and to have had a child by her, but this is not confirmed.

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Emperor Alexander I's wife died a few months later as the emperor's body was transported to Saint Petersburg for the funeral.

Emperor Alexander I was interred at the St Peter and Paul Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg on 13 March 1826.